The
immediate, contemporary act or predicament loses more than half its
meaning and impressiveness if it be re-echoed from no sounding-board in
the past--its notes, however sweetly and truly touched, fall flatly on the
ear. The deeper we attempt to pitch the key of an American story,
therefore, the more difficulty shall we find in providing a congruous
setting for it; and it is interesting to note how the masters of the craft
have met the difficulty. In the "Seven Gables"--and I take leave to say
that if I draw illustrations from this particular writer, it is for no
other reason than that he presents, more forcibly than most, a method of
dealing with the special problem we are considering--Hawthorne, with the
intuitive skill of genius, evolves a background, and produces a
reverberation, from materials which he may be said to have created almost
as much as discovered. The idea of a house, founded two hundred years ago
upon a crime, remaining ever since in possession of its original owners,
and becoming the theatre, at last, of the judgment upon that crime, is a
thoroughly picturesque idea, but it is thoroughly un-American. Such a
thing might conceivably occur, but nothing in this country could well be
more unlikely.
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